Second Cold War

The Second Cold War was a military showdown between the United States and the Strategic Defense Coalition arranged by Cordis Die terrorist Raul Menendez, fought from 2018 to 2025. Via a cyber attack on the Chinese economy, Menendez crippled the People's Republic of China and forced them to stop exporting mineral goods to the United States, endangering their economy and bringing on a new era of cold war. President Marion Bosworth of the USA ordered Admiral Thomas Briggs of JSOC to take control of the situation, and through the actions of a JSOC Strike Force as well as the team of Commander David Mason the PRC and USA reconciled and made peace and brought down Menendez in Les Irois, Haiti.

Background
Nicaraguan drug cartel leader Raul Menendez was angry at American capitalism since a warehouse fire in 1972 burnt his sister's face and nearly killed the two of them; the fire was engineered by some American businessmen who wanted to collect insurance money. On May 21 1982 Menendez's father Jose Luis was killed in a CIA-sanctioned assassination, and Menendez swore to fight against the capitalist countries who let the people suffer for their own gain: these were the United States and the People's Republic of China primarily.

In 1986, Menendez began to sell weapons to Cuba, Angola, and other third-world countries. He was involved in the Angolan Civil War in the 1980s, giving weapons to the Cuban Army, and in Kabul he was revealed by CIA drones to be supplying the Red Army during the Soviet-Afghan War. The CIA tried but failed to assassinate him both times, and on 25 September they teamed up with the Panamanian Defense Forces to assassinate him at his Wasa King headquarters in Nicaragua. PDF commander Manuel Noriega freed Menendez as a favor and Menendez escaped, and when a grenade thrown by an American killed his sister, he swore to kill Alex Mason, the leader of the CIA team, with CIA operative Jason Hudson as his man on the inside. In the invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause) in 1989, Menendez tricked Frank Woods, a CIA operative, into shooting Mason (who survived, believed to be dead) and he killed Hudson, and having achieved his goals, proceeded to continue on with his plan to bring down the capitalist countries. From 1989 to 2014, he used his drug money to buy military facilities in Cuba and Haiti and elsewhere, and he armed militiamen in the Middle East and mercenaries that were ex-Cuban militia. On 22 June 2014 he created Cordis Die, an organization devoted to global revolution that would destroy capitalism forever.

In 2018 Menendez started his plan by launching a massive cyberattack on China's online economy, nearly destroying their economical infastructure and stopping them from trading raw minerals with the USA. The two nations devolved into enemies and a cold war began, and Tian Zhao, a former Chinese general, became the chairman of the Asian Strategic Defense Coalition. The goal of the SDC was to unite Asia against the United States, and they convinced many countries to join them. Premier Chen Hanzhang of China was a reasonable man, and he believed in preventing war; the 2022 president-elect of the USA Marion Bosworth started a Bridge the Gap Campaign in which she wanted to restore friendly relations with the PRC.

But due to both Menendez and Tian Zhao's aggression towards the USA, the world was on the fringe of a new world war a mere five years after the previous one had ended. The American president Bosworth handed control of the situation to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), led by Admiral Thomas Briggs from aircraft carrier USS Obama. Briggs used the carrier as a base for striking at the SDC and keeping the Cordis Die in check.

War
Admiral Briggs dispatched Commander David Mason and a team of JSOC operatives to Burma in the Hkababo Razi Mountains to find out about Menendez's operations under his covert military base, which was defended by Cuban mercenaries (ex-militia) with state-of-the-art technology such as drones and invisible cloaking devices, on 20 April 2025. The JSOC team fought their way past the gauntlet of Cuban mercs and made it into the celerium laboratories underground, where they found out from a Doctor Erik Breighner that Raul Menendez was planning to use "Karma" and Celerium to power a weapon that would win the war against the capitalists. But Breighner was killed, preventing access to more information, and the team escaped to report on what they had learned about Menendez's plan.



B ut they also had to worry about the SDC; Chairman Tian Zhao was encouraging his men to invade Russia. Tian Zhao planned to launch an invasion of India to force the Indians into joining the coalition, so Commander Richard King planned to defend the forward operating base code-named "Spectre" (May 21 2025) against the Chinese until the attacks ended; if the base fell, it would be open season on India. JSOC dispatched a strike force that defended the base against many enemy attacks for 8 minutes of combat, and after heavy losses on both sides (the Americans lost more than a regiment of men), the SDC forces withdrew to their VTOLs and the invasion of India was cancelled.

Zhao was not finished with his plans, as he had purchased Dong-Feng Mach-7 missiles and loaded them onto a ship in preparation for threatening Iran into joining his coalition. Admiral Briggs dispatched a team to the Keppel Terminal of Singapore  (30 May 2025) to break down the defenses of the port with network intruders and to destroy the missiles in the cargo ship before it could set sail. In a by-the-book operation, the Americans fried the defensive machines in their own juices and used a missile to destroy the cargo ship and all of the Dong-Feng missiles.

The same day, Mason and his team were dispatched to Pakistan, where a whisper drone over Lahore captured an image of Raul Menendez and his lieutenant Julian DeFalco meeting with rogue ISI officers in Pakistan. Suspicious of Menendez's presence and plans, Admiral Briggs dispatched them to record the conversation between Menendez and the ISI leader in order to find out Menendez' next moves. The team fought their way through the flooded streets with CLAWs at their sides and they made it to "Anthem", a location over the meeting place, where they intercepted Menendez's conversation: they learned about a meeting with Tian Zhao in Peshawar. But as they continued to follow Menendez they were spotted and had to flee, and the team was nearly killed by SDC troops that had found their exfiltration point; had it not been for Mason telling Chairman Zhao that they had no quarrel with China and were only there for Raul Menendez, the Chinese would have killed them.

Reporting back to Briggs, Mason told him about Tian Zhao's involvement in Pakistan. He also found out that the location of the mysterious "Karma" was on the Colossus resort in Cayman Trench, the biggest example of how the 1% lived. The team, dressed as union officials and claiming that they were there to supervise construction on the lower levels, gained access to the building and found Cuban mercenaries in the lower floors. The team fought through the mercenaries and used a security computer, finding out that "Karma" was actually a woman named Chloe Lynch, a former Tacitus Corporation employee who was asked by Menendez to help him with his cyberweapon. But by the time they reached her on the dance floor, DeFalco and some mercenaries reached her and began to execute hostages until she appeared. The Americans opened fire, and the resort became the site of a large battle between the Americans and Colossus Security and the Mercenaries and their ASDs and robotic devices.

As the heavy fighting in the resort went on, Mason and his men caught up to DeFalco and Lynch and Mason shot DeFalco in the chest with a heat-seeking sniper rifle. Lynch was brought in alive and the team left for their headquarters as the last of the mercenaries were either killed or captured by the Colossus security teams.

Shortly after, the JSOC Strike Force used the information gained back in Lahore to find out that the meeting between Tian Zhao and Raul Menendez was set for 17 June 2025. The Strike Force landed in Peshawar, and shot down three VTOLs; one of them was Zhao's, and when it crashed, they set out to confirm the kill. Chairman Zhao used the emergency protocol system to seal himself in his crashed VTOL, so the Americans had to fight their way past the SDC troops and plant a network intruder to gain access to the airship. When the doors opened, they shot Zhao and killed him, and confirmed the kill with a picture. Operation Dispatch succeeded, and the threat of a Chinese invasion of Russia was erased. Premier Chen, who had lost control of Tian Zhao, was glad to know that China would not be taken into a war by a rogue general and the SDC reestablished friendly relations with the USA.

Two days later, on the "Day of Independence" (the emancipation of slaves in Spanish America), Admiral Briggs dispatched Mason's team to Socotra Island to kill Menendez, and although Mason knew that it was a trap, Briggs ignored his warnings and ordered him to contact CIA undercover operative Farid and the Yemeni Militia. The Yemeni Army planned to assault Socotra to aid the Americans, but Menendez was aware that the Americans would come to him and was ready.

While Menendez was holding a Cordis Die rally, an American VTOL opened fire on the crowd, killing most of the militants, but a militiaman used a missile launcher to destroy it. Farid, who had to pretend to be aligned with Cordis Die in order to apprehend Menendez, told Menendez to meet him at the marketplace while he would shoot his way through the guards. The Yemeni Army fired on Farid, who fired back and killed some of them to keep his cover. In the battle, many of the militiamen were killed by quads that the Yemeni Army sent to fight, as well as by their trained regular soldiers. But Menendez made it safely to the square, and he shot down a VTOL captained by Mike Harper, Mason's right-hand man who was supposed to use the VTOL to gun down Menendez. Menendez had Farid shoot Harper to test his loyalty, and when Harper yelled "Do your job!" to Farid, Farid reluctantly shot him. Menendez proceeded to escape with the militia, and David Mason and the members of his team headed to the market, where Farid apologized for killing Harper. Mason reminded him that he did what he had to, and they proceeded to chase Menendez and fight the militia. They found Menendez at the edge of the city, and loaded him onto a VTOL for extraction to the USS Obama, having completed their goal.

Menendez was brought into the brig of the USS Obama, where he was held for interrogation. But the ship powered off as Mason was interrogating Menendez, and when the power came back on, he found Menendez free of his chains and holding his teammate Javier Salazar hostage. Confused how Menendez was freed, Mason was forced to put the handcuffs on to save Salazar from Menendez killing him. When Mason was freed he found the ship under attack from mercenaries, and Menendez was escaping. He aided the crew in fighting back against the mercenaries but Menendez made it to the server room, where Salazar showed his true colors and shot the crew and nearly killed Chloe Lynch, but Farid threw himself in front of her and took the bullet. Menendez then knocked out Admiral Briggs, as Salazar pleaded for him not to kill the admiral. Menendez installed a virus and he and Salazar escaped, but Salazar surrendered below deck without resistance as Menendez escaped in a VTOL. Mason later arrived in the server room and found Briggs, who had woken up, and Chloe, and Chloe was able to stop the virus. Menendez's drones that he had sent to attack USS Obama were shot down by Chinese drones, who had come to assist the Americans in fighting Raul Menendez. Mason and the crew attempted to stop Menendez from escaping, but were too late; they had still saved the Obama from destruction and rescued Briggs.

Meanwhile, President Bosworth entered a video conference with Premier Chen, who thanked her for her good actions in defending China from Menendez's drone attacks on Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and other cities. Bosworth's Bridge the Gap goal succeeded and China and the USA made an alliance, but she was interrupted when the Secret Service told her that she had to leave Los Angeles, which was coming under a drone attack along with many other cities. Mason was dispatched to assist her in evacuating the city, and he took part in the fighting in the city, shooting down enemy drones and escorting the President to an evacuation zone. As drones destroyed the huge city, Mason saved some G8 leaders and the French president, making sure that the fallout from the catastrophe would not become worse. The attack on Los Angeles cost many lives on both sides, but Menendez failed in his plan to kill the US president and the European leaders.

President Bosworth, having escaped, found out that Menendez was operating from a US drone facility in Les Irois on the western coast of Haiti, from which he had launched drone attacks across the world. Mason and many other soldiers prepared to launch the final attack, as the last of the mercenaries and Menendez were stationed there. In the last hours of June 19, 2025, Mason jumped out of a VTOL and landed in the facility, where he aided the US troops (who were in turn assisted by Chinese snipers) in fighting the mercenaries and Menendez's robots. The team entered the main facility, which was highly damaged by the attack, and when they made it to the drone control room, they found a video broadcasted by Menendez showing that the drones sent to attack the world's cities fell out of the skies, as he cancelled his drones in order to let the President see her people die. He also rigged bombs around the building, killing many American soldiers, but Mason caught up to him near the exit and killed all of his guards. Menendez, held to the ground, was open to be killed by Mason, but Mason instead decided to capture him and bring him to justice rather than let him be a martyr.

Aftermath
Menendez was imprisoned in a US jail, and Chloe Lynch was able to stop Menendez's cyberattack and Celerium worm with her hacking skills. Menendez remained in jail, and David Mason reunited with his elderly father Alex, whom he thought was dead, and Frank Woods also met with Alex. The USA and China were allied and the Cold War ended, but the damage was severe and the dead many.